“There is no doubt of it, Mrs. Allen Barnaby — no doubt whatever, of your success I mean, nor of all the rewards in this world and the next, which you will so well deserve to receive,” replied Mrs. Beauchamp, with an ardour which was considerably more sincere than that of her companion. “You will, indeed, have every advantage,” she resumed, “for not only will you see things without prejudice by being made to understand them really as they are, but from having been in the habit of writing so much in the old country you must have got the knack of it, as we say, and will find the work come to your hand quite easy, I expect.”
“Yes, my dear Mrs. Beauchamp, I have written a good deal,” replied Mrs. Allen Barnaby, with a modest, meditative air; “and though during several years of certainly very successful publication a feeling of timidity, perhaps too long indulged, has prevented my ever meeting the public, face to face as I may call it, under my real name, I cannot now, as you well observe, feel any of the difficulties of a mere novice. I shall, on the contrary, set about my task with that delightful sensation of confidence which conscious ability I believe always gives. Do not impute vanity to me, my dear madam, from my saying this; but the fact is, that it would be the most contemptible affectation were I to pretend ignorance of the admiration which my writings have produced.
I have never published anything, I can truly say from the moment I first handled a pen, without its meeting the most brilliant success, and it would show a great want of common sense on my part were I to pretend now to fear that I should fail, and with such a theme too!”
“It would, indeed, be folly for any one to suppose such a thing possible,” replied Mrs. Beauchamp, “but yet, I cannot help thinking,” she added, after the meditation of a minute or two, “I cannot help thinking, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, that you might bring your work forward in a superior sort of style, as I may say, if you would just consent to put in the title-page, ‘by the author of,’ — whatever previous works of yours have had the greatest success.
I really would strongly advise you to think again and again of this, before you finally make up your mind against it.”
“Do not mention the subject to me again, I entreat of you, Mrs. Beauchamp,” returned the European lady, with some slight display of impatience. “You know not, to be sure it is impossible that you should know, how eternally I have been — I may say — persecuted in England with the same request, and, having resisted the most earnest entreaties of persons of station even too high for me to venture to name, can you really think that I ought to yield to any other? I feel quite certain that when you have thought a little more about it, Mrs. Beauchamp, and when you have brought yourself to recollect that there are in our country persons — or at any rate one person — whom it is by no means easy to refuse, you will perceive and acknowledge the necessity of my continued reserve.”
“Why, as to that, Mrs. Allen Barnaby,” returned the republican lady, “I have no great notion of any one person being such a vast long way before all the rest as you seem to make out, and to say the truth, I can’t realise to myself the possibility of such an elegant smart woman as you are, being chained up in that way, as I may call it, by any one. Why, there’s our president, now, he’s first and foremost in course, because it has been our will and pleasure to make him so; but, Lord bless your soul, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, he might ask any one of us to do anything from July to eternity, and it would never come into our heads to do it unless indeed for some profitable object of our own, which is quite another thing, and what all sensible men will calculate upon doing at all times. But for giving way to him for any other reason, he may march from Washington very considerably east of sunrise, before he will find anybody ready to do any such meanness. However, we won’t talk any more about politics just at present, and, instead of it, I want you to show me what you have jotted down there.”
And Mrs. Beauchamp, with a little natural and national curiosity, did just peep at the foolscap page which lay, half filled in large characters, after the manner of a list, before Mrs. Allen Barnaby. That lady’s MS. however was not, as it seemed, yet ready for examination, for, with a good deal of dignified mystery, she laid a blank sheet over that upon which she had written, and said, “Not yet, dearest Mrs. Beauchamp, not yet, if you please though this very paper, which I now conceal, is written expressly that I may communicate it to you. But as yet I am not fully prepared to do it. It will contain, when filled up, a list of questions to be addressed to yourself, on the particular themes that I shall consider it most necessary to touch upon in the course of my work; and may I not hope that you will kindly condescend to answer them?”
“And that’s just what my very heart is longing and burning to do,” replied Mrs. Beauchamp, her handsome face in a glow of patriotic excitement; “and I do hope it won’t be long before you are ready to begin.”
“If any immediate arrangements for our being a good deal together can be made, my dearest lady, I should be ready to begin our important consultations directly. In short, the major has promised to bring me home several whole quires of paper to-day, besides a large quantity of pens, and a bottle of ink. So you may see, my dear madam, from my giving him such a commission, that I have no intention to delay the business. However, I charged him to buy the paper at different shops, for fear of creating suspicion of what I was about. I always took the same precaution in London, when I began a new work.”
“Dear me! Did you really? How very cautious!” And then, her curiosity whetted anew by this allusion to mystery, Mrs. Beauchamp once more ventured to return to the forbidden subject, and added, “Do now, just tell me the name of the least and littlest of all your books!”
Mrs. Allen Barnaby coloured violently through her rouge, and for a moment felt convinced that the interesting history of her anonymous fame was suspected; but when she ventured to look again at the animated countenance of Mrs. Beauchamp, she perceived, with the greatest possible satisfaction, that she was altogether mistaken. Nothing was to be seen there but the most respectful admiration, excepting indeed that little imp-like sparkle of curiosity, which peeped out of her eyes, and which, under the circumstances, would certainly have been pardonable in any daughter of Eve, but in a transatlantic one the want of it would have been nothing less than unnatural. Mrs. Allen Barnaby, therefore, again rallied her spirits, and played off with great ability the part of an embarrassed and somewhat agitated incognita, to whom the removal of the veil would be excessively distressing, while the preserving it was exceedingly difficult. At length the scene reached its climax by her putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and exclaiming, “Spare me! my dearest Mrs. Beauchamp! spare me! The time shall come when I will have no reserves with you; but your own admirable judgment must tell you that just at this moment, when my nerves are naturally shaken by the contemplation of an undertaking which I feel to be almost awfully important, there would be great weakness in my suffering my spirits to be agitated by my making a disclosure which, I am well aware, would at once bring upon me the eyes of all America, as well as of all Europe. I implore you, therefore, for the present, to make no further allusion to my former writings, but rather let us employ the precious minutes with which you favour me by arranging how I can in the most effectual manner be thrown into the circle among which you usually live, in order to catch as much as possible, your views and opinions upon all subjects.”
“Well, then,” returned Mrs. Beauchamp, with the most perfect good humour, “I expect I won’t plague you one bit more at present, as you say, about the works that have made your false name so celebrated. Not but what I’d give one of my fingers to know what the name was. However, we will say no more about it now; and instead of it I will tell you what my scheme is for our passing as much time together as possible. I calculate, in course, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, that your plan in writing upon the Union, is to travel through all the most celebrated and wonderful parts of it?”
“Most assuredly,” replied the authoress, with decision.
“Well then, my plan is to t
ravel too,” returned Mrs. Beauchamp; “because then, you know, as the things come in all their glory before our eyes, I can explain them to you, and make you realise their particular excellence at the first blush, as I may say. What do you say to that plan, Mrs. Allen Barnaby?”
“That it is the most admirable, the most perfect, the most inconceivably kind that could possibly have entered your head, and that so inspired, I must be dull indeed if I fail. But what does the colonel and your beautiful daughter say to it my dear Mrs. Beauchamp?”
“Oh! Annie is delighted. She has long been dying for a travelling frolic; and she undertakes to do the honours to your friends, which will leave us to our studies, you know. As to the colonel, to say the truth, I have not yet mentioned the subject to him; but he is, I do expect, the very best man alive, and I am sure he will make no objection, provided the major can smoke a cigar and play a game of piquet. Can he, Mrs. Allen Barnaby?”
“The major is very fond of smoking,” replied our heroine; “and I rather think too,” she added, gently, “that he now and then likes a game at piquet.”
“Well, then, I will answer for all the rest,” resumed the energetic Mrs. Beauchamp, her patriotic ardour animating her even to her fingers’ ends, which were already itching, as she said, to be at her packing. “The colonel will be back in a few minutes to take his morning iced julep, and then I will tell him all about it.”
Mrs. Beauchamp was by no means “talking without her host,” when she said that if the major smoked cigars, and played piquet, she could answer for all the rest. Of course she was too clever a woman not to know how to set the thing properly before the eyes of her husband. She said little or nothing to him concerning her project of redeeming the reputation of the United States, and undoing all the mischief which former travellers had perpetrated against this rudely-treated portion of the earth’s surface, by taking the pen of Mrs. Allen Barnaby under her especial influence and control. She said little or nothing of all this, because she knew that, although her husband was, as a matter of course, an excellent patriot (what American is not?), yet nevertheless, the sluggish circulation of his blood, which, without greatly injuring his bodily health, had reduced his mental energies very nearly to the condition of those of a dormouse, prevented his greatly enjoying any long discussions on the subject. What she chiefly dwelt upon, therefore, was the great delight which his darling Annie would enjoy from travelling in the society of this very distinguished English party, and also the providential circumstance of their meeting with a gentleman who could both smoke cigars and play piquet, and thus Tender the performance of his long-given promise of taking his daughter “about a little,” a matter of pleasure instead of annoyance.
“Very well, my dear,” was the colonel’s first answer; “manage it just as you like. If it’s a good boat I shall be quite ready to start.”
CHAPTER XIII.
WHEN Major Allen Barnaby learned from his wife that the travelling party, to be composed in the manner already agreed upon by the two ladies, was actually arranged, he smiled very good-humouredly, and said —
“That’s all very well, my Barnaby, and a capital hand you are to set a machine in action. But you don’t quite calculate, do you — as these curious fellows say — upon my being ready to pack up, and to go away at a moment’s warning? You do not in sober earnest expect that, do you?”
These words
Of doubt and dread came like a thunderbolt — or rather like an avalanche, for nothing could be more chilling — on the ears and heart of poor Mrs. Allen Barnaby. Never having been from her earliest infancy in the habit of doubting her own powers, she had no sooner fully conceived the scheme of writing a book, than a well assured and very brilliant success immediately rose before her mind’s eye, as being perfectly certain, and that, too, no mere idle, windy, wordy success, born in the drawing-room, and buried on the staircase, but solid, profitable, money-getting success, that might do as much to help them forward, or very nearly so, as one of the major’s best games at piquet in Curzon-street; and overlooking the possibility that her husband’s view of the case might not be precisely the same as her own, she felt as much shocked and disappointed at hearing him thus speak to her as if he had suddenly declared that he meant to turn hermit, and for the future should require no money at all.
The dismay expressed by her countenance was so great, and, to say the truth, so comical, that the major for one moment laughed outright. But this was a species of amusement that, upon principle, he rarely indulged in, and before the fire which he saw mounting to his lady’s eyes had fully flashed upon him, the foolish fit was over, and his laugh exchanged for a smile of the most amiable domestic amenity.
“Come, come, wife,” said he, “you must not take what I say too gravely, either, and I cannot help laughing when I see you getting it into your head that I mean to take up my dwelling in this cursed place and remain here to be broiled everlastingly. Set your heart at rest upon that point, my Barnaby. If you are in such haste to be off, it’s lucky for you, perhaps, that the set here are just what they are. Why, my dear, will you believe it, I don’t think that out of the thirty or forty playing-men, that I have either tried myself, or watched others try, I don’t believe that out of the whole number there’s half a dozen that isn’t as keen witted as myself — you understand me? Now that won’t do, you know, by any means. What’s good play, or a sharp eye, or the help of Tornorino, or anything else, with such a set of fellows? The difference between London and New Orleans seems to be just this: — On our side of the water there’s a population of flats, with just a respectable sprinkling of sharps among them to keep men from going to sleep, and sinking into absolute stupidity. But here, upon my honour and soul, the whole population, old and young, strikes me as being sharps, with such a scanty supply of flats amongst them, as it breaks one’s spirit to think of. And as for the diamond-cut-diamond sort of business, that is carried on here, it would not suit me at all. I am not used to it, and I am not quite so young as I was, my dear, and ceaseless, never-ending hard work don’t suit me. I won’t say but what I might be a match for them if I tried hard for it, but the profit would be little or none, for after a fair trial between me and most of ’em, I am greatly mistaken if we should not one and all come to pretty nearly the same conclusion, and that would just be to let one another alone.”
“But how do these gentlemen make the thing answer themselves, my dear Donny?” demanded his wife, with her usual shrewdness.
“Why, I suppose, by watching for every new arrival, like sharks after a dead body,” he replied; “but that would never answer for us, my dear Barnaby. Besides, if it did, they would get so confounded jealous of me, being an Englishman, that I should have no peace of my life. No, wife, I shan’t stay here, I promise you — you have no reason to be terrified by that notion.”
“But you have not lost anything to speak of yet, have you, my dear?” said she, her own satisfaction at the idea of their departure being for a moment lost sight of, in her domestic anxiety for the well-doing of every member of her beloved family. “You have not paid very dear, I hope, for what you have learned?”
“No, my dear,” he replied, “that is not my way, and I should have thought you might have guessed as much. No; I thought I detected something the first night, just before the party broke up, that looked a little like a determination to let me win, but I was not sure of it; so last night I became a good deal more heedless and gay-hearted, you see, than before, and then I saw — ay, and heard, too — what put me up to them. Why, they had found me out in no time, and all their scheming was not to get the better of me, but to get me dropped out of one or two set-to games they had been planning, where they had got something like a novice to work at. So I very quietly let them have their way about it, and I think that puzzled them again a little. But that’s only the fun of a moment, mind you, and would not last, I’ll engage for it, long enough to make me sure of a dozen dollars. However, we can’t suppose, you know, that they are all finis
hed up in this high style, in every part of the Union, and further on I hope we shall fare “better, my Barnaby. I shall do very well, by-and-by, I dare say, so don’t look uneasy about it.”
“Heaven grant we may fare better, my dear!” replied his wife; “for confident as I am of the success of my work, it will by no means do, Donny, for us all to depend upon it, you know.”
“No, my dear,” said he, very demurely, “I don’t think it will. Nevertheless, wife, I do not intend, mind you, to set off post haste, just after what happened last night. They would understand it exactly as well as you do, and a little better too, perhaps, for you will be thinking, naturally enough, that your book has something to do with it; while they’d know, well enough, every mother’s son of them, that coming out here to see what I could do, I had met with my match, and was off to find game less wild elsewhere; and I’ll leave you to judge the sort of introduction that would follow after me. So, if you please, my dear love, we will not start in a bustle, and you must please to tell your new friend, Mrs. Beauchamp, who, I suspect, manages her husband more completely than even you do yours, my Barnaby, that you intend to begin your examination of their magnificent country here, and you may ask her, if you will, to introduce you about a little. Everybody seems to know them, and I am told that Beauchamp has the finest estate and the largest gang of slaves in all Carolina.”
However well Mrs. Allen Barnaby might manage her Donny, she knew what “if you please, my dear love,” meant, as well as an old mare on a common knows the length of her tether; and she, therefore, hazarded not one word of objection to this prolonged abode at New Orleans, though she not only longed, with extreme impatience, to set off on the progress which her new friend had sketched out to her in such inviting colours, but she also earnestly desired to remove herself from an atmosphere where she was perpetually uttering prayers, the very reverse of Hamlet’s, and wishing that her too, too melting flesh were more solid, and not thawing and dissolving itself into dew, as it did at present. There was, however, something in the idea of being introduced into New Orleans society by a person whom everybody knew, and who had the finest estate and largest gang of slaves in Carolina, which was very consolatory, and like a wise woman, she immediately fixed her thoughts, and brought her conversation to bear on this most agreeable portion of her husband’s discourse.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 340
